Police always had Mitchell Quy in their sights

RETIRED Detective Superintendent Geoff Sloan, who headed the murder team that eventually forced Quy into confessing, says he has always remained cynical of what happened to the missing body parts of the young mother-of-two.

RETIRED Detective Superintendent Geoff Sloan, who headed the murder team that eventually forced Quy into confessing, says he has always remained cynical of what happened to the missing body parts of the young mother-of-two.

Mitchell’s brother Elliot was jailed for helping to dispose of the 21-year-old’s head and hands, which he said he put in black bin bags and threw among rubbish outside a Birkdale shop.

Mr Sloan, who says seeing Quy jailed was the highlight of his career, believes the egotistical former croupier instead roped in someone else.

The distinguished former policeman told the Visiter: “I don’t accept that after all they had done, that Mitchell would simply allow Elliot to walk away with the most significant parts and throw them among rubbish.

“The head and the hands were the most easily identifiable parts of Lynsey so I think they would make sure to put them somewhere they couldn’t be found.

“I have always thought a third party with access to hospital waste disposal got rid of them, though only the Quy brothers know the answer to that.”

Mr Sloan, then 45, was drafted in to review the investigation into Lynsey Quy’s disappearance and soon decided to pursue a murder inquiry – main suspect, her husband Mitchell Quy.

He added: “I always thought he was the one who killed her. I didn’t believe him when he said he was innocent for one second. It always frustrated me when the Visiter published an interview with him because it fuelled his lies.

“He was so wrapped up in the notoriety and the fame that I think he started to believe it himself. He loved the attention.”

As Mitchell told the world how police had unfairly branded him a murderer and were wasting public money on the investigation, Sloan and his team never had doubts about eventually pinning Quy down.

Officers honed in on a period prior to Christmas 1998, when Lynsey missed several important appointments, including one with a solicitor

Mr Sloan added: “When we looked into those dates, we found that Lynsey had telephoned the benefits agency from a phone box to say her benefits cheque hadn’t been sent.

“It transpired that Mitchell had stolen them and cashed them in himself. We knew that was probably the last conversation she would ever have.”

When returning home to question Mitchell, a row broke out that culminated with Lynsey being strangled to death.

But without a body, police had to rely on circumstantial evidence to bring Mitchell to justice

He added: “It was one of the first cases of someone being charged without a body being found. After a tough interviewing process he eventually cracked.

“But what he had actually done never entered my head. I always thought that – as he admitted – he strangled her. I never considered he would have gone to the lengths he did.

“It was gruesome to cut her up in a bath which he bathed the children in. It just sums up what a horrible, nasty person he is.”